Question: I am curious about the origin of the word "surveillance" and whether "surveil" is a legitimate word, as in "to surveil an area."
- M. L. Monroe, Connecticut
Answer: "Surveillance" comes from the French word "sur-veil-ler," meaning "to watch over." The French word itself is derived from the prefix "sur-," meaning "over," and ultimately from the Latin "vigilare," "to watch." The first recorded use in English of "surveillance" dates to 1802.
The verb "surveil" is a rarely used but otherwise "legitimate" word meaning "to subject to surveillance." It is a relatively new word, with its first recorded use dating only to 1949. "Surveil" is what grammarians call a "back-formation," which is a word created by subtracting a real or supposed affix from an existing longer word; for example, "donate" is a back-formation from "donation," and "burgle" is a back-formation from "burglar." Back-formations tend to attract unfavorable attention from usage commentators, and we're sure that "surveil" has its critics, but our evidence shows that in its narrow range of use it is an established part of the English vocabulary.
Question: Here in New England, it seems that this summer has been worse than usual. But it's not the heat, it's the humidity! On a day when it wasn't too hot to think, I got to wondering about the word "muggy." Where does it come from? What does it have to do with humidity?
- K. L., Bridgeport, Connecticut
Answer: People have been able to complain of unpleasant mugginess since at least 1746, when the word "muggy" first appeared in print. The first recorded use of the word, in fact, is itself a complaint that "the weather was hot and muggy." We can assume that the word existed in dialect prior to this written appearance.
"Muggy" comes from another English dialect word, "mug," meaning "drizzle." As a verb meaning "to drizzle or rain lightly," "mug" has been around since the 14th century; as a noun it appeared in the 18th century at about the same time as "muggy." "Mug" in turn can possibly be traced to Old Norse "mugga," meaning "a fog or mist," which was another early meaning of "mug." It is a short leap from the "fog or mist" meaning of "mug" to the "warm, damp, and close" sense of "muggy" we are familiar with today.
Incidentally, "humidity," the more scientific and formal-sounding word, is about three hundred years older than "muggy." But it was not until 1657 that a written complaint about the humidity first appeared, when Richard Tomlinson wrote, "Watry humidity doth dullify the strength of every sapour (sense)," an observation we can probably all agree with this summer.
Question: What is the history of the word "volume"? When I want to turn up the sound on my stereo system I reach for the "volume" knob, but when I want to find out how sound travels through the air from the stereo to my ear I reach for a "volume" of my encyclopedia. I can't see the connection between these two senses.
- L. B., Seneca, South Carolina
Answer: "Volume" comes from the Latin noun "volumen," which in turn derives from the Latin verb "volvere," meaning "to roll." The Roman volumen was an early book printed with projecting ends. The reader held the roll in the right hand and, once he or she had read a column, rolled it onto another cylinder with the left hand.
The French borrowed the word from Latin, changing it to "volume," and in the 14th century the English acquired the word from the French. At first "volume" simply meant "book," but by the 16th century it had also come to mean "the size or bulk of a book." From here the word evolved into a more generalized sense meaning "the quantity, amount, or mass of anything," and in the 19th century "volume" acquired yet another meaning: "strength or intensity of sound."
Question: I'm confused about the word "obtuse." For some reason I had thought the word meant "confusing or unclear," but the vocabulary book we use in my English class says it means "dull or stupid." I asked my teacher if it could also mean "confusing and unclear" and she said no. But I'm sure I've heard it used this way. Am I just crazy?
- B. R., Boseman, Mont.
Answer: The sense of "obtuse" covered in your vocabulary book is an older and more established sense, but in recent years a new sense has emerged. This new sense, which can be defined as "difficult to comprehend; unclear," probably resulted from confusion with the words "obscure" (meaning "not easily understood or clearly expressed") and "abstruse" (meaning "hard to understand; deep or complex").
The new sense of "obtuse" is well enough established to warrant its inclusion in some dictionaries, but it is still on shaky ground.